Migration From Auth0

Obtaining User Data

You can use either the Auth0 management API or the Auth0 user interface to export user data. This guide uses the user interface, but if you have a large number of users, the management API is recommended. Auth0 also has a high level export guide worth reviewing.

If you are using the user interface, usernames, email addresses and other data can be obtained by installing an extension and downloading the data. The password hashes can be obtained by opening a support ticket.

Here’s a brief video walking through the export process, which is further documented below.

Mapping User Attributes

The attributes of the User object in FusionAuth are well documented.

If there is an attribute in your Auth0 user which cannot be directly mapped to a FusionAuth attribute, you can place it in the user.data field. This field can store arbitrary JSON values and will be indexed and searchable.

Social Logins

Auth0 also provides integrations with other social login providers such as Twitter, Google or Facebook. Review the supported FusionAuth Identity Providers to ensure your social providers are supported.

If not supported explicitly, a provider may work with an OIDC or SAML connection. Otherwise, please open a feature request.

When migrating social logins, you may need to modify the switches of the Auth0 import script. See Use the Script for more.

Migrating users with social logins such as Apple or Facebook requires that you have an existing user Id for that provider. What this unique user Id looks like depends on the particular social identity provider. The unique Id may be an email address, an integer, UUID, or a random string.

Configure the appropriate FusionAuth Identity Provider with the same values (client_id, etc) as the original user management system you are migrating away from.

Import users with the Import API, assigning each user with a social login a random password such as a UUID.

Your next step depends on whether the social login provider’s unique identifier is available as part of your migration data. If you have the social login provider’s unique identifier, for each user, use the Link API to create a link with the appropriate User Id, Identity Provider Id and Identity Provider User Id.

• The User Id is the Id of the recently created FusionAuth User.

• The Identity Provider Id is found on the corresponding Identity Provider API documentation. Look for identityProvider.id.

• The Identity Provider User Id is the existing social provider user identifier exported or otherwise extracted from the original system.

You do not need to migrate the social network token, which may or may not be accessible. During the first login of a newly migrated user, FusionAuth finds the unique user in the social login provider based on the migrated Identity Provider User Id, and completes the login. During this process, FusionAuth stores a token on the Link, if the social provider returns one. Depending on the configuration of the social provider, users may see a prompt asking if they want to allow FusionAuth to have access to user data such as email address.

If you do not have the social login provider’s identifier, you need to decide if you want to transparently link the two accounts, which is easier for the end user, or if you want to ask the user to manually link the accounts, which is more accurate, but may be confusing.

To transparently link the accounts, choose a linking strategy of Link On Email or Link On Username, which will create the user if they don’t exist. However, if the user has an email address at their social provider which differs from the email address that was used to sign up for your application and which you imported to FusionAuth, then two accounts will be created.

For example, if the user has a Google account richard@gmail.com, but signed up for your application with richard@fusionauth.io, then if you use the Link On Email strategy, two different accounts will be created, since FusionAuth is trying to match on email address and they don’t. The same holds true for usernames with the Link on Username strategy.

To prompt the user to link the accounts, choose a linking strategy of Pending, which will prompt the end user to sign into FusionAuth after they sign into the social provider, authoritatively linking the two accounts.

Here’s more information about IdP Linking Strategies.

Other Entities

There are often other important entities, such as connections or roles, that need to be migrated. There are usually fewer of these, so an automated migration may not make sense, but plan to move this configuration somehow.

Be aware that functionality may not be the same between Auth0 and FusionAuth. This is different from user data; as long as you can somehow migrate a login identifier (a username or email) and a password hash, a user will be authenticated and successfully migrated. You can download FusionAuth before you begin a migration and build a proof of concept to learn more about the differences.

A partial list of what may need to be migrated for your application to work properly includes the following:

• In Auth0, Connections are a source of data for users. FusionAuth calls these Identity Providers.

• Rules, Hooks and Actions are ways for you to customize authentication or authorization workflows. FusionAuth has a similar concept called Lambdas.

• With Auth0, APIs, Applications and SSO Integrations are what your users can log in to. They are also called Clients in the Auth0 documentation. FusionAuth refers to these as Applications.

• Tenants are a high level construct which groups other entities such as users and applications together. FusionAuth calls these Tenants as well. FusionAuth supports multi-tenant configuration by default.

• For Auth0, Roles and Permissions provide information about what your users can do in your custom or off the shelf applications. FusionAuth has Roles and they are defined on an Application by Application basis.

• Refresh tokens allow JWTs to be refreshed without a user logging in. These can be migrated using the Import Refresh Tokens API.

Embedded Login

Auth0 provides Embedded Login. This is a complex, configurable login component that works with SPAs, native applications and web applications. It is also not recommended by Auth0:

FusionAuth’s login experience is simpler. You can choose to build your own login pages or use FusionAuth’s hosted login pages. Read more about these choices.

FusionAuth’s hosted login pages are very similar to Auth0’s Universal Login.

You can build an experience similar to Auth0’s Embedded Login using the FusionAuth Login API, but FusionAuth does not offer any widgets or SDKs that use that API.

Once you’ve planned your migration, the next step is to export your user data from Auth0.

Add the Extension

Auth0 provides an extension that allows you to both import and export users to and from Auth0. Add the extension by navigating to Extensions and searching for it.

After you find the extension, install it:

The next step is to run the extension.

Run the Extension

Next, run the extension. The first time you run it, you’ll be asked to grant needed permissions. Then, choose the export tab.

This will bring up a screen with information such as what fields you want to export, which connections to pull users from, and the export file format.

For this guide, export user information as JSON. Choose the default user database. Finally, if you have special fields to include, configure their export as needed. Then begin the export.

Depending on how many users you have in your database, it may take a while for this to complete.

Download the File

After the export finishes, download the file provided. At the end of the process, you’ll end up with a JSON file like this:

{"user_id":"auth0|60425da93519d90068f82966","email":"test@example.com","name":"test@example.com","nickname":"test","created_at":"2021-03-05T16:34:49.518Z","updated_at":"2021-03-05T16:34:49.518Z","email_verified":false}
{"user_id":"auth0|60425dc43519d90068f82973","email":"test2@example.com","name":"test2@example.com","nickname":"test2","created_at":"2021-03-05T16:35:16.786Z","updated_at":"2021-03-05T16:35:16.786Z","email_verified":false}

This is half of the data you’ll need to migrate your users. The other half is the password hashes.

Set Up FusionAuth

You need to set up FusionAuth so migrated user data can be stored. As mentioned above, this guide assumes you have FusionAuth installed.

If you don’t, view our installation guides and install it before proceeding further.

Create a Test Tenant

It is best to create a separate tenant for migration testing. Tenants logically isolate configuration settings and users. If a migration goes awry or you need to redo it after tweaking settings, you can delete the test tenant and start with a clean system. To add a tenant, navigate to Tenants and choose the green plus sign.

Give it a descriptive name like Auth0 import test. You shouldn’t need to modify any of the other configuration options to test importing users.

Save the tenant.

Record the Id of the tenant, which will be a UUID. It will look something like 25c9d123-8a79-4edd-9f76-8dd9c806b0f3. You’ll use this later.

Create a Test Application

Applications are anything a user can log in to. In FusionAuth there’s no differentiation between web applications, SaaS applications, APIs and native apps. To add an application, navigate to Applications and choose the green plus sign. Give the application a descriptive name like Auth0 application.

Select your new tenant, created above, in the dropdown for the Tenant field.

Navigate to the OAuth tab and add an entry to Authorized redirect URLs. Use a dummy value such as https://fusionauth.io. Later, you’ll need to update this to be a valid redirect URL that can take the authorization code and exchange it for a token. Learn more about this in the FusionAuth OAuth documentation.

You shouldn’t need to modify any of the other configuration options to test importing users. Save the application.

Next, view the application by clicking the green magnifying glass and note the OAuth IdP login URL. You’ll be using it to test that users can log in.

Add an API Key

The next step is to create an API key. This will be used by the import script. To do so, navigate to Settings → API Keys in the administrative user interface.

This key needs to have the permission to run a bulk import of users. In the spirit of the principle of least privilege, give it only the following permissions:

• POST to the /api/user/import endpoint.

• POST to the /api/user/search endpoint.

• POST to the /api/identity-provider/link endpoint (not shown below).

Record the API key string, as you’ll use it below.

Get the Script

FusionAuth provides an import script under a permissive open source license. It requires ruby (tested with ruby 2.7). To get the script, clone the git repository:

git clone https://github.com/FusionAuth/fusionauth-import-scripts

Navigate to the auth0 directory:

cd fusionauth-import-scripts/auth0

Install Needed Gems

The following gems must be available to the import script:

• date

• json

• optargs

• securerandom

• fusionauth_client

Most likely all of these will be on your system already, except the fusionauth_client gem.

If you have bundler installed, run bundle install in the auth0 directory. Otherwise install the needed gems in some other way.

Use the Script

You can see the output of the script by running it with the -h option:

ruby ./import.rb -h

The output will be similar to this:

Usage: import.rb [options]
    -l, --link-social-accounts       Link social accounts, if present, after import. This operation is slower than an import.
    -r APPLICATION_IDS,              A comma separated list of existing applications Ids. All users will be registered for these applications.
        --register-users
    -o, --only-link-social-accounts  Link social accounts with no import.
    -u, --users-file USERS_FILE      The exported JSON user data file from Auth0. Defaults to users.json.
    -f FUSIONAUTH_URL,               The location of the FusionAuth instance. Defaults to http://localhost:9011.
        --fusionauth-url
    -k, --fusionauth-api-key API_KEY The FusionAuth API key.
    -t TENANT_ID,                    The FusionAuth tenant id. Required if more than one tenant exists.
        --fusionauth-tenant-id
    -s, --secrets-file SECRETS_FILE  The exported JSON secrets file from Auth0. Defaults to secrets.json.
    -m, --map-auth0-id               Whether to map the auth0 id for normal imported users to the FusionAuth user id.
    -h, --help                       Prints this help.

For this script to work correctly, set the following switches, unless the defaults work for you:

• -u should point to the location of the user export file you obtained, unless the default works.

• -s needs to point to the location of the password hash export file you received, unless the default works.

• -f must point to your FusionAuth instance. If you are testing locally, it will probably be http://localhost:9011.

• -k needs to be set to the value of the API key created above.

• -t should be set to the Id of the testing tenant created above.

The -o and -l switches will attempt to create links for any social users (where the user authenticated via Google or another social provider) found in the users data file.

If you are loading social users, you must create the social providers in FusionAuth beforehand, or the links will fail. Additionally, creating a link is not currently optimized in the same way that loading users is. So it may make sense to import all the users in one pass (omitting the -l switch). Then, after the users are imported, create the links using the -o switch in a second pass.

You may or may not want to use the -m switch, which takes the Auth0 Id for users without a social login and uses the same value for the FusionAuth user Id. If you have external systems reliant on the Auth0 user identifier, set this. Doing so ensures imported users have the same Id as they did in Auth0. Otherwise, you can omit this switch.

When you run the script, you’ll see output like:

$ ruby ./import.rb -f http://localhost:9011 -k '...' -s secrets.json -u user-data.json
FusionAuth Importer : Auth0
 > User file: user-data.json
 > User secrets file: secrets.json
 > Call FusionAuth to import users
 > Import success
Duplicate users 0
Import complete. 2 users imported.

Verify the Import

Next, log in to the FusionAuth administrative user interface. Review the user entries to ensure the data was correctly imported.

You can manage the user by clicking on the black button to the right of the Created date in the list to review the details of the imported user’s profile.

If you have a test user whose password you know, open an incognito window and log in to ensure the hash migration was successful. You recorded the URL to log in to the example application in Create a Test Application.

After the test login, the user will be redirected to a URL like https://fusionauth.io/?code=FlZF97WIYLNxt4SGD_22qvpRh4fZ6kg_N89ZbBAy1E4&locale=fr&userState=Authenticated. This happens because you haven’t set up a web application to handle the authorization code redirect.

That is an important next step but is beyond the scope of this document. Consult the 5 minute setup guide for an example of how to do this.

The Final Destination of Imported Users

After you are done testing, you can choose to import users into the default tenant or a new tenant. Whichever you choose, make sure to update the -t switch to the correct value before running the import for the final time.

If you aren’t keeping users in the test tenant, delete it.

If you need to start over because the import failed or you need to tweak a setting, delete the tenant you created. This will remove all the users and other configuration for this tenant, giving you a fresh start. To do so, navigate to Tenants and choose the red trash can icon.

Confirm your desire to delete the tenant. Depending on how many users you have imported, this may take some time.